best tank m+

[Sturmwut]

Hey guys,

I tank with different speccs in m+. Usually, I play leather tanks. Last season I focused on a bm monk, this season too. I tried guardian druids after the buffs but with his low gear its not that much fun. DH's were buffed too and Jesus, they are now on steroids. So much fun to play and until level 14 I have no problems as a DH with incoming damage. I take a lot of damage compared to my monk but heal also a lot.

How are the plate tanks? I will try a warrior next. Everyone says warrior and pally are the best tanks for m+, but I believe that most are biased from last season. What tanks do you play, what's in your opinion the strongest and what tank do you enjoy the most?

I will stick with DH's until I get the feeling, that I take to much damage. It is so much fun, give it a try if you didn't already.

Greetings

Edit:
To clarify:
I'm not a try hard and this is not to ask which class I should play. I play what I like, right now it is dh > monk > warrior = guardian.

The highest key I did intime are only +14.

[dagonar]

Paladin tanks are in a great place. Loads of utility (big instant cast group heals, good stun, multiple interrupts, clense, blessings) and plenty of defensive cooldowns. They have a really diverse toolkit which suits the class ethos and lets you customise for different content combined with good survivability. Since Legion they have decent mobilty, and are actually great fun to play.

They really shine in Mythic+ where clearing trash and AOE are more important than the boss, assuming your group knows the mechanics.

Solo play is also pretty easy provided you switch to DPS talents, essenses, and trinkets while you play world content.

[Baleful]

If you want the best leather you should stick to BrM, VDH and bear are underperforming even after the buffs.

[Tech614]

If you want the best leather you should stick to BrM, VDH and bear are underperforming even after the buffs.

As someone who plays 2 of the 3, those being BRM and VDH... VDH is better in M+ now. Maybe not at the the top, but certainly for keys 15 and below which is probably what someone asking for advice on a forum is doing. BRM is king in raiding but are meh as hell in M+ and really bring nothing special to the group, meh dps, have to be baby sat by any non druid healer limiting their dps.

You likely see more brewmasters completing high keys because 1) more good players main a brewmaster since they also tank mythic raids on it(look at all 4 brewmasters in the top 10 on IO, all raid mythic and 3 of them are past ashvane meaning above average mythic raiding at that) and 2) not enough people switched over to gaurdian or VDH after the patch. It's not a performance issue between these 3 in M+ certainly because brewmaster ain't nothing special in M+ at all. Especially on lower keys(15 and below) where stagger means jack shit because no tank will die and brewmaster is lagging behind in dps.

But anyways the best tanks for M+ are both Prot specs. After that it's probably debatable.

[Sturmwut]

But anyways the best tanks for M+ are both Prot specs. After that it's probably debatable.

and why are prot warriors still kings?

[Malkiah]

and why are prot warriors still kings?

because the wow community bases its perception of the value of a class on a very narrow niche execution of content done by esport champions operating at peak levels of efficiency for the purpose of competition, so whatever classes they use the community just automatically think are amazing because they saw this one guy do it good on twitch.

i have every tank at about 418-425, i'll tank a 10-12 each week on each of them, i do almost exclusively pugs - so my anecdotal experience is about as randomized and hodge-podge as you can get.
but from that experience and of course utilizing my own personal playstyle which causes my opinions to shift based on what i'm personally good at, i seem to be the most successful in terms of tanking on my guardian druid. it can feel pretty gear dependent but IMO once you're in even a moderate spot it's just a good truck-along tank spec that you don't need to be tricky with to do well, at least in terms of mitigating.

VDH is fun as you noted but not especially great at the mitigation aspect which can put a lot of pressure on pug healers and waste a lot of your self-healing if they're not prepared to let you cover for your own increased damage intake.
i feel like blood DK has the same issue, only on top of that it's not really at all fun to play - the niche gimmick of grip can be nice but other than that it's just kind of boring.

paladin feels like a solid middle of the road, i'm not very keen on how both mitigation and damage output can be very RNG dependent, but the kit is reliable.

being honest i simply don't care for BrM or war tanking, because both of them are kind of shit at it if you're just chugging along and not constantly maximizing 8 buttons worth of little tricks every second in order to actually get their gimmicks to work.
i guess it's fine if you play it enough and are used to it and so don't have to actually think about the rotations at all or when to use certain abilities, but when i play either of them i'm just jittery about all the shit i have to push at the right time in order to be even marginally effective and runs are just that little bit more stressful than they would have been otherwise.

[Grmmppff]

because the wow community bases its perception of the value of a class on a very narrow niche execution of content done by esport champions operating at peak levels of efficiency for the purpose of competition, so whatever classes they use the community just automatically think are amazing because they saw this one guy do it good on twitch.

i have every tank at about 418-425, i'll tank a 10-12 each week on each of them, i do almost exclusively pugs - so my anecdotal experience is about as randomized and hodge-podge as you can get.
but from that experience and of course utilizing my own personal playstyle which causes my opinions to shift based on what i'm personally good at, i seem to be the most successful in terms of tanking on my guardian druid. it can feel pretty gear dependent but IMO once you're in even a moderate spot it's just a good truck-along tank spec that you don't need to be tricky with to do well, at least in terms of mitigating.

VDH is fun as you noted but not especially great at the mitigation aspect which can put a lot of pressure on pug healers and waste a lot of your self-healing if they're not prepared to let you cover for your own increased damage intake.
i feel like blood DK has the same issue, only on top of that it's not really at all fun to play - the niche gimmick of grip can be nice but other than that it's just kind of boring.

paladin feels like a solid middle of the road, i'm not very keen on how both mitigation and damage output can be very RNG dependent, but the kit is reliable.

being honest i simply don't care for BrM or war tanking, because both of them are kind of shit at it if you're just chugging along and not constantly maximizing 8 buttons worth of little tricks every second in order to actually get their gimmicks to work.
i guess it's fine if you play it enough and are used to it and so don't have to actually think about the rotations at all or when to use certain abilities, but when i play either of them i'm just jittery about all the shit i have to push at the right time in order to be even marginally effective and runs are just that little bit more stressful than they would have been otherwise.

"a very narrow niche"...or just simple knowledge of what specs are highest in the leaderboards. Your perception is based on doing "10-12"s, that's not really a great spot to start in-depth-analysis from tbh, neither is 418-425 ilvl, when 430/435+ is easily obtainable for everyone doing some hc raiding and m+. Your "evidence" can hardly even be called circumstancial, which you prove by adding your personal trouble with playing 2 of the specs... To be fair, at least you even call your experience "anecdotal", "randomized" and "hodge-podge" yourself, which still makes me wonder, why you blame the perception of the wow community before, when yours is even more unfunded.

Calling grip a "niche gimmick" is kinda funny as well, as that's one of the greatest utilities you can get in m+.

Given that "best" currently means able to survive while dealing the highest damage possible and bringing some decent utility. And in that regard, as mentioned before, the 2 prot specs, so prot pala and prot warr, are the best. That doesn't mean they're the most fun, or the easiest to play, nobody said that, they're still in the highest keys, with the highest damage and best utility.

[jiih]

because the wow community bases its perception of the value of a class on a very narrow niche execution of content done by esport champions operating at peak levels of efficiency for the purpose of competition, so whatever classes they use the community just automatically think are amazing because they saw this one guy do it good on twitch.

i have every tank at about 418-425, i'll tank a 10-12 each week on each of them, i do almost exclusively pugs - so my anecdotal experience is about as randomized and hodge-podge as you can get.
but from that experience and of course utilizing my own personal playstyle which causes my opinions to shift based on what i'm personally good at, i seem to be the most successful in terms of tanking on my guardian druid. it can feel pretty gear dependent but IMO once you're in even a moderate spot it's just a good truck-along tank spec that you don't need to be tricky with to do well, at least in terms of mitigating.

VDH is fun as you noted but not especially great at the mitigation aspect which can put a lot of pressure on pug healers and waste a lot of your self-healing if they're not prepared to let you cover for your own increased damage intake.
i feel like blood DK has the same issue, only on top of that it's not really at all fun to play - the niche gimmick of grip can be nice but other than that it's just kind of boring.

paladin feels like a solid middle of the road, i'm not very keen on how both mitigation and damage output can be very RNG dependent, but the kit is reliable.

being honest i simply don't care for BrM or war tanking, because both of them are kind of shit at it if you're just chugging along and not constantly maximizing 8 buttons worth of little tricks every second in order to actually get their gimmicks to work.
i guess it's fine if you play it enough and are used to it and so don't have to actually think about the rotations at all or when to use certain abilities, but when i play either of them i'm just jittery about all the shit i have to push at the right time in order to be even marginally effective and runs are just that little bit more stressful than they would have been otherwise.

you know what matters even less than the top?
whats going on in 10-12 keys with pugs.

this is literally normal/lfr niveau

And if warrior gets played at the top (not only mdi) it s obviously powerful and not shit because some guy cant press shield block in lvl 10 keys.

[Sturmwut]

okay, it looks like prot warriors are also very good at mitigating damage. Is this because they block that much damage or because of their defensive cooldowns?

[Grmmppff]

block, ignore pain, strong defensive cds.

[Ange]

I will stick with DH's until I get the feeling, that I take to much damage. It is so much fun, give it a try if you didn't already.

If you like tanking with utility and be able to min-max a lot with selfsustain you could also try out blood tanks. Tyrannical weeks are really hard to gauge what a tank can really do, since some specs have gimmicky abilitys that trivilalizes boss damage. For really creative pulls or saving messy pulls spamming thunderclap or kiting around as DH wont be really helpful, since all you do is lower the ability for DPS to actually do damage even more and making the pull even worse than just wiping.

Spamming thunderclap in S2 got some really awful players into tanking. Say what ever you want about blood's dominance in S1, but at least the average tank was pretty decent with pulling and positioning of mobs, highly mobile tanks tend to make the most mest up pulls possible and that doesnt really help for faster runs.

It might be just more experience from players playing the dominant dungeon tank since MoP. Sometimes it feels like EVERY DAMN DK TANK in M+ is tanking at least since 7 years, because every one of them is wearing the CM gold transmog.

[Baleful]

As someone who plays 2 of the 3, those being BRM and VDH... VDH is better in M+ now. Maybe not at the the top, but certainly for keys 15 and below which is probably what someone asking for advice on a forum is doing. BRM is king in raiding but are meh as hell in M+ and really bring nothing special to the group, meh dps, have to be baby sat by any non druid healer limiting their dps.

You likely see more brewmasters completing high keys because 1) more good players main a brewmaster since they also tank mythic raids on it(look at all 4 brewmasters in the top 10 on IO, all raid mythic and 3 of them are past ashvane meaning above average mythic raiding at that) and 2) not enough people switched over to gaurdian or VDH after the patch. It's not a performance issue between these 3 in M+ certainly because brewmaster ain't nothing special in M+ at all. Especially on lower keys(15 and below) where stagger means jack shit because no tank will die and brewmaster is lagging behind in dps.

But anyways the best tanks for M+ are both Prot specs. After that it's probably debatable.

Yup for 15 keys VDHs are good, but everything after 18 they start lacking enough mitigation, moreso on tyrannical weeks. Have a friend pushing with VDH (raiding mythic too 6/8 atm) and he starts to have problems at higher keys.

block, ignore pain, strong defensive cds.

Don't forget about spell reflect, it cheeses some bosses. They removed simulacrum out of DK (even when you ahve to take the damage of the actual spell to be able to cast it) with 45 sec CD just to keep a 25 sec CD free simulacrum on warrio, with a 20% free spell damage reduction too :\

[Viromand]

There is no real best tank, it depends on what you are doing.

If you run 10-12 in pugs, Pala ist the best due. You can interrupt alot with your shield. Strong selfhealing. Good CDs. The kit fits perfectly for pugs, if your healer ist not that good or some dps dont interrupt important stuff.

if you have a decent guildgroup that runs 10-15 it doesnt really matter. It depends on so much, do you have a druid heal. BrM do very well with them. disc and pala is also quite nice.

If you want to do high lvl m+ similar to MDI, Protection warrior is by far the best. His AoE dmg is absolutely insane. 1.5 CD aoe dissorient. 25 sec aoe stun. Strong def CDs. Group Def CD. The avatar essence is so strong.

You doing high key without massive aoe pull. I think Warrior Monk and pala are the best.

You can rate them but unless you are consistently doing 17-20 keys its not that important. Again if you discount the MDI level stuff. The difference are not so huge as some people make it out to be. Most tanks have small problems.
Like druid still has its heal on GCD which is kinda bullshit for a reactive Ability. Even Protection got their IP off GCD even it beeing a Proactive one. A GCD is alot of dps you miss and maybe even survivability due to not beeing able to gain rage.
VDH still feel a bit squishy without the active mitigation. They are very strong in every other regard.
Blood feels mediocre in every regard. they are decent at everything. decent utillity, decent healing. There is nothing mandatory about that class, even Grip and aoe grip feels a is not the most needed thing in m+, helpfull but still. It feel like the pala does everything just a little bit better.
BrM is really strong with stagger but magic dmg can kill him easily(not counting mobs that dont melee hit you or you dont have to move). And your keg smash not landing on all mobs can be really problematic with aggro. Statue, lower stun CD, and Ring of peace are all in on one talentlvl. You offen wish you had all of them during a dungeon.

Rating tanks for all M+ is really hard. It depends on how good your healer is. Group comp, a group with 3 magic dmg dealers or 3 physical make a huge different. So much to consider. Key lvl, group comp, healer, how big are your pulls. Is it tyrannical or trash week, what dungeon are you running. If you want an overall rating. Going with BrM Pala or Warrior is most likely the best choice, but its very close till you reach 15+.
The best tank including comp, at high lvls is the warrior thats why everyone in MDI is using it.

[Biomega]

For most people, any tank will do just fine.

The higher you go towards the extreme high end of the spectrum, the more pronounced differences between tanks become. The popular Prot Warr > Brewmaster > Prot Pala > Bear > Vengeance DH ranking that is a result of perceptions at the MDI level doesn't really apply in the same way to 99.99% of players.

[avx81]

because the wow community bases its perception of the value of a class on a very narrow niche execution of content done by esport champions operating at peak levels of efficiency for the purpose of competition, so whatever classes they use the community just automatically think are amazing because they saw this one guy do it good on twitch.

i have every tank at about 418-425, i'll tank a 10-12 each week on each of them, i do almost exclusively pugs - so my anecdotal experience is about as randomized and hodge-podge as you can get.
but from that experience and of course utilizing my own personal playstyle which causes my opinions to shift based on what i'm personally good at, i seem to be the most successful in terms of tanking on my guardian druid. it can feel pretty gear dependent but IMO once you're in even a moderate spot it's just a good truck-along tank spec that you don't need to be tricky with to do well, at least in terms of mitigating.

VDH is fun as you noted but not especially great at the mitigation aspect which can put a lot of pressure on pug healers and waste a lot of your self-healing if they're not prepared to let you cover for your own increased damage intake.
i feel like blood DK has the same issue, only on top of that it's not really at all fun to play - the niche gimmick of grip can be nice but other than that it's just kind of boring.

paladin feels like a solid middle of the road, i'm not very keen on how both mitigation and damage output can be very RNG dependent, but the kit is reliable.

being honest i simply don't care for BrM or war tanking, because both of them are kind of shit at it if you're just chugging along and not constantly maximizing 8 buttons worth of little tricks every second in order to actually get their gimmicks to work.
i guess it's fine if you play it enough and are used to it and so don't have to actually think about the rotations at all or when to use certain abilities, but when i play either of them i'm just jittery about all the shit i have to push at the right time in order to be even marginally effective and runs are just that little bit more stressful than they would have been otherwise.

Your kidding right? The MDI is why prot warriors are viewed so highly and some guy streaming? Me parsing on my BDK in raids (I average 95th percentile) at similar rankings prot warriors are doing 10-15% more damage. In M+ it is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Watching prot warriors do more damage on half the pulls than a windwalker in the group at the MDI. Spiking to 150k dps on some pulls while the healer just sits in kitty form the entire time because the tanks health is barely budging after pulling multiple groups in a 17 key.

In season 1 Blood DK's made up +50% of the +20 keys ran. Now in Season 2 and Season 3 we see prot warriors at +50% representation in high keys. They are basically the only tanks that exist at the MDI currently. They are literally busted right now beyond S1 Blood DK. It has nothing to do with some guy streaming on twitch that made everyone swap over from various tank specs (mostly blood) to prot. It has to do with the fact that even after their slap on the wrist damage nerf they are already back to spiking to 150k on trash while the healer can sit and dps most of the time because their health is not even moving.

Your evidence is rotating between every tank at lower key levels and item level without mastering any particular one. I'm not saying playing 6 specs is a bad thing but if its anything like a buddy of mine he does the same thing and plays them all to about 50% of their potential at best rather than trying to figure out how to play 2-3 of them properly. As in not understanding when to blow cd's to maximize damage, not using the utility he brings properly, not using his defensive abilities and having a very basic understanding of how to play the classes.

As others have said if your maxing at +10 keys literally play anything. If you want an easy time getting into pugs go one of the prot specs. If you want to do +15 keys or higher your either going to need a high raider io score or your gonna have to go prot. Either way go prot warrior if you plan on doing that high of keys or be prepared to get declined from groups. Groups outright asking for prot warriors is already thing sort of like S1 BDK except prot is somehow still not getting touched.

It cracks me up because people screamed for Blood DK nerfs after season 1. Pulling everything and the healing from bonestorm not having a cap is what made them broken. Blood basically had a god mode button for 10 seconds every minute. They were at the same representation as prot warriors are today. Now that prot warriors are a full tier ahead of any other tank people are saying its because of these esport champions trying to push out an extra 1% performance. I'm not out screaming for nerfs but right now prot warriors defense and offensive capability are completely unmatched. Blizzard would need to make another tuning pass at every other tank to make the MDI and high keys even remotely diverse. Utility is a thing but obviously nobody truly cares about death grip and battle res especially when the healer brings brez. Make the other tanks have insane defense and do stupid damage like prot warriors and watch how other people suddenly start playing other tank specs because they prefer the play style.

And if warrior gets played at the top (not only mdi) it s obviously powerful and not shit because some guy cant press shield block in lvl 10 keys.

^

[Lucetia]

Paladin tanks are in a great place. Loads of utility (big instant cast group heals ...

Wait, what? Paladins have a big instant group heal? Which ability is that? I've played a paladin forever and don't recall a group heal via talents or spellbook. All I know is you can talent for HoP to be used on others, but it's not anything "big" at times as well as JoL which heals for peanuts, but still useful.

[thebdc]

Wait, what? Paladins have a big instant group heal? Which ability is that? I've played a paladin forever and don't recall a group heal via talents or spellbook. All I know is you can talent for HoP to be used on others, but it's not anything "big" at times as well as JoL which heals for peanuts, but still useful.

Maybe @dagonar is confusing it with the Word of Glory Retribution talent?

[Naville]

Playing 5 tank specs here, mostly doing +10/+12 keys right now, with ~435 ilvl gear.

I would like to add something about scaling, which feels very different on those multiple specs. By this I mean how your character is getting stronger with gear, especially with the amount of primary stat (str/agi) you have.

Prot warriors have an amazing scaling. Replace your 415 shield or weapon by a 430 one, or a 420 azerite by a 445 one, and you'll immediately notice the difference. This make this spec getting stronger and stronger, either in terms of mitigation or damage.

VDHs have also a great scaling, except that they were weaker than any other spec to begin with. But things are getting better with gear, so if you like it, stick with it. Mine feels way more confortable to play now with S3 gear. Having a good amount of haste and haste procs with new gear/445 azerite traits greatly increases your demon spikes uptime and makes you tougher than before.

Prot pally feels as the best well-balanced tanking spec to me. They have a good mitigation but you need to use it wisely. Same applies for your damage, if you learn how to balance between offense and defense. Their scaling is also quite good.

Then we come to BDKs. Their scaling is way behind, the most benefit you get from gear is actually having more stamina. I'm not even using strength gems on my BDK, only versa ones, stacking versa just feels stronger than stacking primary stat. Unless played at your higher key level (which was +17 for me on S2), they are kinda boring. I'm expecting a noticeable diminution in BDKs population throughout the season

[Raisei]

I play BrM but when we are doing Guild M+ higher then 10 I tend to let my Prot Warrior co-tank take over and either heal or dps.

The sad truth is, that if you throw a Prot Warrior into a group of Trash they will achieve absurd amounts of damage, easily on par with fully fledged dps classes. Their cleave damage through Thunder Clap and Revenge combined with the Avatar dps CD will beat every other Tank class at the moment. So having a Prot warrior Tank in M+ is about the same as having 0,5 extra dps in your group. Because of the timer and the constant need to burn groups of Trash down, you can imagine why you would want that.

In Damage Mitigation BrM is still pretty much the King, but it suffers a bit against huge groups of Trash, ("Death by a Thousand Cuts" is pretty much the major weakness of Stagger). Prot can deal better with that by blocking pretty much everything during their Shield Block. On top of that they have more DefCDs to work with.

For Raids BrM will usually just be the better since their speciality is taking huge boss hits to the face and survive with little problems, while a Prot Warrior might be killed when he is running out of Shield Block charges at a bad time (usually good players don't have this happen a lot, but I think 100% uptime is still impossible, correct me if I am wrong), but in M+ I would always take the warrior first.

My experience with VDH and Blood are a bit more limited, but it requires a certain mindset I think. Your health with go up and down like crazy and a slight error in timing will kill you. One has to like that sort of heartattack-playstyle. I do not. Generally Blood brings a lot more Utility tho, the Pulls are great for several affixes and in Def CDs Blood is far ahead of VDH.

[Malkiah]

As others have said if your maxing at +10 keys literally play anything.

which was my point, and it astonishes me that 4 people replied to my post and didn't grasp that.

if someone is posting on MMO-C asking which tank is best for M+ then statistically speaking that is NOT someone in an established group of good players pushing 15+ keys on a regular basis. maybe the OP is some uberleet tryhard and for some batshit reason is turning to MMO-C forums for basic and fundamental gameplay advice, but i doubt it.

my post assumed the question was being asked from the perspective of someone who probably wasn't going to be bothering to push high keys, giving one opinion on the differences between the tanks.